Scaredy cat Thorne 2

by Mark Billingham

  In its own way, an appropriate response. After all, it was a very cold night.

  He was thinking.

  He would try to stop...

  Thorne, too, was thinking about something that had happened a long time ago ...

  The boy he'd last seen trudging towards school sporting a feather cut, though he wasn't an awful lot taller, had at least filled out a little. It was three years later. It was twenty-five years ago. Boxing Day. Nineteen seventy-six. A two-all draw at home against Arsenal, ground out on a snowy pitch with an orange ball. An acceptable result in a season that was going from bad to worse. His dad had stayed up near the ground for a pint with his mates, leaving him to make his own way back He trudged up the Seven Sisters Road, the dark slush soaking through his boots, filling his turn-ups. The blue and white scarf worn as much for warmth as to declare allegiance. They looked like grown men from a distance, but as they got close, he could see that they were only a year or two older than he was. They were bigger too, with green Harrington jackets, and red and white scarves.

  He brushed shoulders with one as they passed and a look was exchanged. He had shrugged slightly and smiled. Two apiece. A fair enough result, don't you reckon?

  A few minutes later he heard the footsteps thumping behind him and before he had a chance to react, the first of them was on his back, an arm around his neck, driving him face first on to the icy pavement. Cars roared past, spraying water and light across the three figures, but not slowing down.

  He pushed himself up on to his knees and got the first of several punches in the face. As the fists came down, he deflected some with his arms, feeling something crack in his hand at the same time as something long and heavy smashed across his shoulder blades. He was crying and straining to get down on to the floor so he could pull his knees up to his chest. He could no longer tell which were the grunts of pain and which were the dull sounds of fists clubbing into cheekbone and shoulder.

  He heard a voice and saw the shadow of an arm reaching across him. The biggest of the Arsenal fans stepped over him, cursing, and finally, he was free to drop back to the floor. He rolled over, moaning, and as he began to crawl away, he turned to see them laying into an older man in shirt sleeves. One of them had him by the hair while the other casually brought his forehead down into the man's face. The man was Greek, he thought, maybe Cypriot. Difficult to tell with all the blood. Perhaps he was a shopkeeper who had heard the noise and stepped out to intervene. He shouted and swore as the two thugs pushed him down into the wet gutter and drew back their feet. Tom Thorne began to shout too, then, for someone to come. Shouting for help as the first kicks went into the groin and stomach. Shouting even louder than the man on the floor as the boots flew in again and again. Shouting for help and running away, fast... He moved around the flat, turning off the lights, very ready for bed. He smiled, remembering the way his dad had ranted from the terraces: foul-mouthed and usually wide of the mark. 'Hoddle, you're fucking useless?

  He wondered what had become of the man who'd tried to help him and got a good kicking for his trouble. He probably hadn't made the same mistake again.

  He still felt guilty that he hadn't gone back. He'd scanned the papers for days afterwards but found nothing. The man was probably not seriously hurt, but the boy couldn't forget the pain and fury on his face. Twenty-five years on and Thorne could still see it, and hear the soggy thump as the man had crashed down on to his back in the slush. Thorne closed the bedroom door, sat down on the side of the bed and started to undo his shoelaces. Twenty years a copper and he still couldn't understand why they'd attacked him. He'd only smiled at them.

  FOURTEEN

  Thorne thought: so this is old age.

  A heavy chair near the television, with its shit-coloured seat covered in plastic and panic buttons everywhere. Handles around the bath and piss-soaked knickers in the sink, and a woman who couldn't really give a toss, popping round twice a day to see if you're dead yet.

  'Do you take sugar, Mrs. Nicklin?' McEvoy stuck her head round the kitchen door.

  Annie Nicklin shook her head at nobody in particular and Thorne relayed the answer to McEvoy with a more obvious gesture of his own. Though she hadn't said a lot, the woman in the heavy chair, with her clawed hands resting on top of a green blanket, was still fairly sharp mentally, but her body was on the way out. Arthritis, diabetes, angina.., the catalogue of diseases had been reeled off cheerfully by the warden - a hard-faced article named Margaret - as she'd shown them into Annie's flat and explained that they wouldn't get a great deal out of her. Nobody ever did.

  McEvoy brought the tea through, and as she handed round the mugs, Thorne continued to ponder the question that had absorbed him since he'd walked through the door. Which was preferable? A good brain and a body that was fucked? Or hale and hearty flesh and bone, with nothing left up top? Obviously, nobody ever really got the choice, but still, Thorne couldn't help weighing it up. Considering the options. It looked as if his old man was heading down the second road, but Thorne reckoned that when it came to it, he'd prefer to go to pieces upstairs and downstairs. At least that way, if he were sitting in his own mess, he'd be blissfully unaware of the fact...

  He sipped his tea and thought about meeting Ken Bowles the day before. There was a man who could see pain and loneliness just up ahead. He took a biscuit and thought about the Enrights. As if the everyday agonies of old age weren't bad enough. He had the same old thoughts about the boy, Charlie Garner, who was no age at all. His life still ahead of him and already blighted. His mother taken away by the son of the old lady sitting a few feet away, slurping tea in a shit-coloured chair covered with plastic. Thorne stared at Annie Nicklin. When she had looked at her son, at Smart, back when he was no older than Charlie Garner, what had she seen in his future? What had she dreamed he might become?

  'That all right for you, Annie?' McEvoy asked. Mrs. Nicklin nodded again, slurped a bit more, continued to stare at the television screen, even though it wasn't switched on. Thorne hoisted his behind from the depths of the soft, springless sofa and leaned forwards. 'We just wanted to ask you about Smart.'

  Nothing. Just the noise of the drinking. The endless beep beep of a lorry reversing somewhere. A dog howling in one of the other flats. Thorne looked across at McEvoy, raised an eyebrow. You have a crack, and keep it nice.

  McEvoy, much to her annoyance, had won that morning's tossup. Thorne had not been able to decide which would work better with the old woman - Holland's boyish, floppy-haired charm or the empathy of a younger woman? The coin had picked McEvoy and in the car on the way out to Stanmore, with Thorne diving and trying to coax any kind of warmth out of the Mondeo's knackered heater, she'd not been shy about why she was pissed off about it...

  'I don't particularly feel like wheedling stuff out of a sweet old lady whose son happens to be a psychopath. You don't need to have read a lot of textbooks to figure that she might have something to do with that.'

  Thorne hadn't read a single textbook and he was having none of it.

  'What? Did she lock him in the coal shed? Make him wear women's clothes and lipstick? We need to talk to this woman, and frankly, I couldn't be less interested in a debate on nature versus nurture...'

  McEvoy clearly didn't care whether he was interested or not.

  'Nurture, every time. Every time.'

  Thorne stopped at traffic lights and yanked up the handbrake.

  'Supposing you're right. You aren't, but supposing you are ...' McEvoy said nothing, stared out of the window - 'what about Nicklin's father? Why can't he have been the one who beat poor little Smart with a coat hanger or whatever?' Palmer had already told him that Nicklin's father had left home when he was still a toddler. Nobody knew, or by all accounts cared, if he was alive or dead. For a few moments, McEvoy thought about what Thorne had said, or at least pretended to. 'No. Mothers and sons. Fathers and daughters...'

  Thorne leaned on the horn as a white van roared away from the lights and swerved in front of him. '
You've never met my father, have you?' McEvoy didn't laugh, so Thorne stopped being nice about it.

  'Listen, if there's anything this woman can tell us that might help, I want to hear it OK? You're a copper, not an amateur shrink, so go in there and do your job...'

  McEvoy had been laying it on with a trowel ever since they'd got there.

  'Maybe we could start with when Smart left home, Annie.'

  The old woman cleared her throat. Her chest rattled for a second or two after she'd finished. Then she spoke. 'That's where it starts and where it finishes. He left. The end.' It was her longest sentence so far. Thorne looked at McEvoy. Carry on...

  'So you never heard from him?'

  Annie Nicklin picked up an empty teacup, looked at it, put it down again. 'There was a letter once, from London.'

  'Do you still have it?'

  She turned her head slowly round to look at them and smiled, though she was clearly in some pain. 'I never opened it.'

  'Did you not want to know where he was?' Thorne asked. He couldn't be sure whether she was choosing to ignore him or the question. Either way, she wasn't answering.

  McEvoy moved on. 'He left in September 1985, is that right?'

  The old woman nodded.

  'Just like that? Out of the blue?'

  'I wasn't.., hugely surprised.'

  Thorne thought: or bothered...

  'This was a month or so after the disappearance of Karen McMahon?' Mrs. Nicklin licked her lips, stared ahead. McEvoy tried

  again. 'When Stuart left, that would have been about a month after... ?'

  With a small moan, Mrs. Nicklin reached for the stick that was propped against her chair and, grunting with the effort, she pointed with it to a bottle of pills on top of the television. Thorne stood up and fetched the bottle. 'These?' He opened the bottle. 'How many? Just one?' Mrs. Nicklin nodded and he handed her a tablet. There was a glass of water on the tray attached to her chair and he passed it to her. She swallowed. Thorne sat down again. Pills for Annie's body which was giving up the ghost. Still sharp up top though. Sharp enough to understand everything. To decide when might be a good moment to take a tablet in order to avoid a question she didn't want to answer...

  'Was he upset about Karen? Was that why he left?' McEvoy was craning her head round, trying to make eye contact. 'How much was he seeing of Martin Palmer before he left?' Somewhere, the dog was still crying, and now, Annie Nicklin was avoiding McEvoy's questions as well.

  Thorne pushed himself up, stepped in front of her. She began to click her tongue and tried to move her head. Thorne stood solid, between the old woman and the television that wasn't on. The gentleness had gone from Thorne's voice. 'Tell me about Karen, Mrs. Nicklin.' There was a low moan from deep in her throat but that was as communicative as she was getting. Thorne leaned down close to her, very little patience left. 'Tell me about Karen McMahon.'

  The case had begun to ring a bell when Palmer had first mentioned the name. Thorne remembered it of course, but not well - a missing girl, a nationwide search - the details were vague. When he found out the date he realised why. The summer of 1985. He had been ... absorbed by a case of his own at the time. Johnny Boy. Francis John Calvert, a killer of gay men, who felt that the police were getting too close. So close that he had had no choice... The nightmare a young DC called Thorne had walked into...

  'Tell me about Karen.'

  He could see the pale, paper-thin flesh around her jaw constrict across the wasted muscle as she gritted her false teeth. With what little movement was left in her clawed fingers, she grasped at the blanket across her lap, pulling it close to her.

  'Tell us and we'll go, Annie,' McEvoy said.

  'She got into a car.' She spoke slowly and with emphasis, as if explaining something terribly complicated. Just to make sure Thorne understood, she said it again. 'She got into a car.'

  'When she was with Smart?'

  'After. A bit after that. She was ahead of him and the car pulled up.'

  'The blue Vauxhall Cavalier...'

  She stared down at her blanket, clutched at it. 'You know all this.'

  Thorne shook his head. She looked away. 'Smart must have been very upset. He saw it all happen, didn't he?'

  She turned back to him quickly. 'Yes. He was upset. He never stopped crying afterwards. Smart saw everything. He saw her get into the car. He saw the man who was driving it. He told the police what the man who was driving the car looked like, you can check.'

  'He told the police? Or he told you and then you told the police?'

  'Both, both.' She rot-rotted and one liver-spotted hand began to rap lightly on the arm of her chair.

  McEvoy was on her feet now, standing directly behind Annie Nicklin's chair. 'This man, the man that Stuart saw, did he grab Karen? Did he get out of the car? Force her?' McEvoy might just as well have been talking to herself. She stared at Thorne across the white hair of Annie Nicklin's bowed head. She shrugged. Enough?

  Despite what Thorne had said to McEvoy in the car on the way over, he had an urge to shout at this old woman, to bully her. He raised his voice only slightly, but as soon as he began to speak, Annie Nicklin raised her head. She met his gaze for the first time, and held it.

  'Did Smart have any idea why? If this man didn't force her, did Smart have any idea why Karen McMahon got into his car? Did he tell you that, Annie?'

  Thorne could feel his hard stare being returned with interest. Then, as if the movement was painful, she dragged her eyes away from his and down towards the floor, one hand clasping the blanket for dear life and the other reaching for the walking stick. It was only after a few seconds that Thorne became aware of what was happening and glanced down. The knocking of the stick against his shin was almost imperceptible. The impact of the rubber tip against the bone was feeble, but the impulse behind the movement was anything but. Annie Nicklin was poking and prodding, trying to push him away, to poke and push him away. Jabbing and pushing at him... In time with the jerky movements of her withered arm and knotted stick, she spoke. Her voice was clear and high, and the tone of it took on a strange sing-song quality as she spoke the same five words over and over again.

  'She got into a car...'

  Urging the Mondeo back towards Hendon, along the bizarrely named Honeypot Lane, Thorne pictured a girl in a white dress - he had no idea what Karen McMahon had really been wearing, but it had been a summer's day - pulling open the door of a blue car, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear and climbing in.

  At the edge of the picture stood a boy called Stuart Nicklin, blurry, with his head slightly bowed, but with those dark eyes taking in every detail. Absent, but very much there, like a phantom image or a double exposure, was a man named Martin Palmer, still utterly fucked up nearly twenty years later.

  There was something wrong with the picture...

  'So, nature or nurture?' McEvoy said, as they got near to Becke House.

  Thorne smiled. 'I'm saying nothing.'

  'A lot like the old woman then...'

  Thorne had to agree. 'I've known armed robbers, rapists ... I've interviewed axe murderers who gave it up easier.' McEvoy laughed, but Thorne was being deadly serious. 'If Nicklin's got a fraction of that determination, or that.., cunning, we're in trouble.'

  'What about Palmer's parents?'

  Thorne shook his head. There was really no need, and besides, they would know what was happening soon enough. One phone call from Palmer, a day or two after he'd given himself up, had established how Nicklin had tracked him down. 'Oh yes, a nice boy you were at school with called, trying to get hold of you ... didn't leave his name.., wanted it to be a surprise, I think.' Beyond that, there was nothing useful to be had out of them. Eventually, it would just be about giving them the bad news.

  He was intrigued, but also a little relieved that Annie Nicklin had shown no interest in news of any sort about her son or his whereabouts. That would have been decidedly tricky.

  'Oh yes, he's turned up... But...'

&n
bsp; At the Peel Centre, they pulled up to the security barrier and Thorne fished around for his ID. McEvoy leaned across him and showed hers to the officer on duty. After a moment, the barrier lifted and Thorne nudged the car towards the parking bays.

  'Got plans this evening?' Thorne asked.

  McEvoy turned away and stared out of the window. There were a dozen or so recruits working with dogs on the far side of the compound.

  'Not really. Early night, I think. You?'

  'Myself and Mr. Philip Hendricks have a hot date with Sky Sports and a Chinese takeaway.'

  'Sounds good...'

  'Yeah, if you don't mind being a relationship counselor when you're trying to watch the match.' He pulled a face for McEvoy's benefit, but really he was looking forward to Hendricks coming over. Unwinding. Letting a little of it go...

  Thorne guided the car into a space next to Brigstocke's Volvo estate and killed the engine. He stared up at the dun-coloured walls and peeling olive paintwork of the three-storey sixties' monstrosity they had the misfortune to work in. If management had any sense, and a desire to maintain levels of recruitment, they would have instructed the film crew to make sure they kept the cameras well away from Becke House.

  'It's a phenomenally ugly building,' McEvoy said, after a few moments.

  Thorne nodded, thinking: We're in it, trying to catch people who do phenomenally ugly things.

  McEvoy pushed in the button to release her seat belt. 'What's on this afternoon?'

  Thorne took a deep breath. 'Well, I'm going to make a few calls, try and find out what's going to cost more, fixing the heater or replacing the car.'

  'About bloody time. I'll be spending the next half an hour trying to get some feeling back into my feet...' Thorne laughed. 'It's ridiculous. Why don't you use the car you've been assigned?'